You see it every day, a passing parade of new-tech gizmos crowding the market.
From phones to mobile Internet devices, digital cameras, music players, and mini notebooks--and on the home theater side--formats that whither and die just a couple of years after their much ballyhooed introductions. Every day there's more junk.
Most of this glittering assortment of wowie-zowie tech trinkets are destined to take up landfill space in five years or less. That's apparently OK; nobody expects to keep an iPhone all that long, and besides there's always something new, jam-packed with the latest tech to buy. Why would anyone expect to just buy something good enough to use for a decade or more?
Audio is the exception to that mindset. It seems like I've met a gazillion baby boomers still using the hi-fis they bought around the time of the first Woodstock. One Audiophiliac reader bemoaned the fact that his 20-year-old $600 speakers were now beyond repair. He got 20-something years of use out of the speakers--and that's not enough.
Woodstock-era audio, still going strong.
(Credit: McIntosh Labs)When it comes to audio people think it should last forever, though some of the best stuff comes close. For example, the "other" McIntosh, the audio company, still factory services amplifiers built when Nixon was president. Gee, I wonder if Apple would fix your dad's Apple II?
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